The important thing to consider is that the format that wins will likely be the format which gets the largest content library; one format will likely start gaining a major advantage in this way within 12 or 18 months as it demonstrates that it can sell more content. Now, Sony is betting that the vast numbers of PS3 systems sold will lead to a dramatic advantage in the number of movies released for the Blu-Ray format but this may not be the case.
Currently, the average number of HD-DVD movies sold per HD-DVD player is standing at 28 (I know, the number surprised me too) and the average number of Blu-Ray discs (including Playstation 3 games) sold per Blu-Ray player is 7; certainly there are more Blu-Ray players currently (about 4 times as many) but they're not selling more Blu-Ray movies. This may change as the PS3 breaks the 5 Million unit sold barrier, but it may not and there is nothing saying that will happen any time soon; it should happen within the next 6 months even if the PS3 is an unpopular system, but nothing is promised at this point in time.
Not quite that simple. The PS3 will *probably* win, but it's highly unlikely that it's ever going to win to the same extent that the PS2 did.
I think the more appropriate thing to say is the PS3 could possibly win. Currently, the PS3 has been selling at a similar rate to how the Gamecube sold in both North America and Japan; most of this (at the moment) is that the PS3 has had such a limited supply, but the systems are available for purchase from online retailers and the eBay prices were lower than what people expected.
The PS3 has had a slow start, this is undeniable. Poor launch-titles (only Resistance worth playing, and even that arguably not as good as Gears of War), a hideous price-tag and hyped shortages so severe that many people were put off from even looking have all contributed to a launch that was more of a whimper than a bang. However, with so many of the big franchises still being tied to the PS3, I'd expect to see the picture change once the first round of price cuts hits (and Sony can't afford to wait too long with these).
The PSP has been on the market for nearly two years and has yet to recieve a price drop in spite of many analysts saying the PSP is in desperate need of a price drop. Sony has never attempted to compete on price, regardless on whether they needed to or not. A lot of the big name titles are likely to get delayed and if (big if) the PS3 sells poorly they will be ported to the XBox 360.
The Wii has had a strong launch, thanks to the novelty value and a media hype campaign (willingly bought into by many outlets and grass-roots types who want to play the root-for-the-underdog aspect) that surpasses even the PS2's, but I'd expect to see things plateauing in about 6 months, given that all the classic signs of another Nintendo flop in the same vein as the N64 and Gamecube are on the horizon. A slow schedule of "big" releases from Nintendo and very few AAA titles from 3rd party developers will have the usual effect, plus Nintendo are, for the first time, faced with the prospect of competing from the back of the technological pack, with many Wii launch titles, including Zelda, looking no better than late-era PS2 games.
History tells us that this never happens... I have never seen a gaming platform sell really well for 6-9 months only to drop off in sales...
If the Wii continues to sell well (which it probably will, because the Wii is still sold out everywhere in spite of steady re-supplies and the end of the holiday season) third party developers will support the system. After E3 last year many developers will be demonstrating games for the first time at E3 this year, and with the initial sales of the Wii being so strong their will be tons of announced games as well; I expect that every publisher in the World will be pushing their DS and Wii content at E3.
Realistically, at the end of this round of the console wars, I'd expect to see Sony with about a 50% share, MS with about 35% and Nintendo with the rest.
I would say that it is WAY too early to discount Nintendo and Microsoft or to proclaim Sony the Winner; first Sony has to demonstrate that they can lead in sales in any region in the world for any time period (even surpassing the Wii for one week in Japan would do).
The "problems" Alex St. John identifies are essentially that his business model doesn't work so great when people have to click a couple extra buttons and type a password, and that he would really prefer it if children could install his products without parental involvement.
Please promise me that you will never work on a project that has a user interface!
The fact is that by forcing people to "click a couple extra buttons and type a password" you begin to annoy everyone, and people with little understanding of security (read: 90% of users) will likely just get used to "clicking a couple extra buttons and typing a password" and it defeats the purpose of having the extra security.
The thing is many of the upcoming PS3 games do interest me, as do a very slowly growing number of Xbox360 games, I'm 20, I have a part time job, goto uni and love all the PS2 games I've played and am a bit of a fan boy. I'm more or less the market for the PS3 but I'm here wondering if it is worth the cash so how will Sony shift 6 million?
I could be absolutely wrong, but I suspect that your age is one of the main reasons you're so readily able to dismiss the Wii; I would say that the 13-21 year old male hard-core gamer group is probably not going to 'get' the Wii because (practically) every system they have ever owned will have had (essentially) the same controller, they are too young to be getting really tired of the existing game genres and they are too image conscience to feel comfortable doing something which looks goofy or childish. Those of us who are a bit older will have seen all sorts of controllers (paddles, track balls, joysticks, flight sticks, d-pads, analogue sticks) so we're less tied to the existing controller model, we have played certain genres and watched them evolve and stagnate, and some realize that we are not that cool so why pretend to be.
To maximize the interest in the Wii Shop channel, and to maximize their profit on each game, Nintendo is being very careful not to release too many of their biggest games at a particular time. If Nintendo releases one of their major classic titles every 6 to 8 weeks you will likely download it, play it until you complete it or get bored, check out the Wii shop channel every week for 4 to 6 weeks (and possibly buy 1 or 2 lesser known games), and when they release their next big game the cycle continues. If every game was available from the start, or they released too many big games at once, you'd likely buy a bunch of games and not look back at the Wii shop channel for months (or possibly years).
That and software is more like art than engineering, but no one wants to admit that. Of all the Renaissance painters that ever painted, only a few became forever famous.
Same thing with coders.
I personally would use the term "Craft" rather than art because I have always believed that art is about "saying" something through your craft which I don't think is really the goal of software development. The truth is that anyone can be taught to be a reasonably good muscian, artist, or blacksmith and with proper motivation anyone can become great. I would say that there are two problems currently, schools focus on the wrong things (how often did you gather requirements, properly design, implement to given specifications, effectively test, or maintain a program in your school years?) and the industry seems to focus more on technology rather than skillset (does it really make that big of a difference to program in C# as compared to Java?); the result is you have someone who is trained to use a hammer designing your house, and you ask someone if they know how to drive a "Ford" when you are interviewing a truck driver.
According to the firm's preliminary estimates, as reported by CNBC, around 2 million Xbox 360 units were sold in North America from November up until December 25.
The figure for Nintendo Wii stood at 1.8 million units - despite the fact the console only launched in North America on November 19, and the first batch of stock sold out within hours.
In addition, Wedbush is estimating that Sony sold 600,000 units (800,000 cumulative) of PS3 and that Nintendo sold 1.3 million (1.8 million cumulative) units of Wii in December.
So NPD (the most accurate tracking company in North America) is predicting that Nintendo sold 1.8 Million Wii in North America as of December 25th, the analyst firm Wedbush Morgan is saying 1.8 in 2006, and your number says 1.2 (likely 1.2 Million in December).
On top of that in Japan the current numbers are 1,000,250 Wii vs. 456,750 PS3 where the Wii has been out for 5 weeks compared to 8 for the PS3; Nintedo has also launched in Europe and sold 325,000 consoles in 2 Days in Europe. So we have a number of 3,125,000 Wii sold before we know how many Wii systems were sold in europe over the past 4 weeks; if you assume sales of approximately 200,000 per week (a reasonable estimate) the Wii as sold ~4 Million units to 1.5 Million PS3 systems shipped.
Oh, I know, I know, when you said competition, you meant "real", "serious" competition. Not, in other words, the Saturn or the Sega CD or the CDi or the 3DO or the Turbo Duo or the Neo Geo. You meant the real, SOLID systems. Just like when you were saying that no Scotsman eats porridge, you were only referring to the true Scotsmen, not like, Angus. Sure, Angus eats porridge, but think about it -- he can't even play the bagpipes!
Most of the competition the Playstation faced in the early days could be compared to the NGage.
Certainly, the NGage was competition for the Gameboy Advance and some people bought a NGage and didn't buy the Gameboy Advance but no one in their right mind ever thought that the NGage stood a chance; the NGage was an awful product that didn't suit people's needs and was remarkably expensive.
The Sega CD, Sega 32x and Sega Saturn being released so closely together both splintered Sega's fanbase and (at the same time) angered many of Sega's early adopters; the Sega CD and 32x demonstrated that Sega was not great at supporting existing products and the Saturn launch with no games.
The CDi, Neo Geo, Turbo Duo, and 3DO were all really expensive in a time when a videogame system was seen as a children's toy; $500 is still seen as an outrageous price for a console and many of these systems were at that price or were higher. On top of that very few games were released for any of these systems while the Playstation was struggling.
You're aware, aren't you, that Sony's "core audience" is defined by about a hundred million PlayStation 2 consoles? Sheesh. I'm one of those PS2 owners, and I'm holding out on the PS3 for myriad reasons (the lack of a hit game being the main reason -- Resistance just isn't my type of game), so I think Sony might have some bumps in the road for the PS3 too, but it's a little early to be writing the obits.
That's simply not correct, Sony's core audience is the people who bought the Playstation or PS2 based on the strength of Sony's first and second party developers. If you look at the sales charts for SCEA ( here ) you'll notice that they have a lot of games that sell well but, except for Grand Turismo, none of their games "define" the PS2; when you look at the total PS2 chart ( here ) you'll notice that Take 2, Square, EA, Konami, and Activision were all heavily responsible for attracting gamers to the PS2.
The playstation did recover from a slow start but it did not have strong competition. When the Playstation was released the main competition was the Saturn and in Japan there was a close battle for a little over 2 years before the overall dominance of the Playstation was ensured; the main reason for this was that in North America and Europe the Saturn was dead on arrival and developers who had an interest in selling games outside of Japan were (essentially) forced to choose the Playstation over the Saturn.
At the same time, the N64 didn't launch until the Playstation had been on the market for 18 months; with this lead time the Playstation was already becomming accepted and had sold over 2.5 Million units in Japan, 1.5 Million in North America and (IIRC) 1.5 Million in Europe and was already becomming the favourite platform of third party developers.
Essentially, it could be argued that the PS3 is launching in an environment similar to the N64 did against the Playstation (where the PS3=N64 and Playstation=XBox 360) and at the same time competing directly against the PS2 (where the Wii is the PS2) ultimately the slow start is far different this time than it was with the Playstation vs. the Saturn.
Declaring some unit to be more popular "in the end" after less than three months on the shelves is like declaring a baseball team the world series champion after the Grapefruit League.
"In the end" is a phrase which is typically used to express how the anticipated result is different than the actual result and does not actually refer to a absolute ending; at this point in time it is fair to say something along the lines of "The PS3 was supposed to be the popular system this holiday season but, in the end, the Wii ended up being far more popular."
It's a marathon, not a sprint. You might be surprised at how the market looks at the end of 2007. The 2 consoles haven't even been out for 2 months yet. There are no winners or losers yet, just leaders. It's a long race. Now return to your parents' basement where you belong.
To a certain extent this is correct but it is not (entirely) true.
No one will have "Won" or "Lost" until sometime in 2008 but (as far as I know) no company has recovered from a poor start when there was strong competition. The fact is that Publishers look at system sales to determine which system will get exclusive games, which system will get games ported to it, and which system to ignore; if the PS3 is selling poorly while the Wii/XBox 360 is selling well publishers will devote most of their resources towards development on the Wii/XBox 360 which will reduce the number of PS3 systems sold (because people buy systems to play particular games).
The data is still not entirely complete (there are some game sales missing for the final week in December) but the yearly chart for Japan has the PS3 at 446,750 units sold; being that the Japaneese statistics are far more accurate than American statistics you could assume that Sony shipped about 500,000 units in 2006.
prolly 100k sitting on the shelves, the wii turned out to be more popular in the end
The interesting thing is that Sony said:
"... United States up to the end of 2006, still promising 6 million worldwide by the end of March 2007."
So over the next 3 months Sony plans to ship an additional 3.5 Million PS3 systems. Now if you were to assume 1 Million units for Europe that still means that 2.5 Million PS3 systems have to be shipped to North America and Japan over the next 3 months. Personally, I wonder how many of these systems will just end up sitting on the shelf or in a warehouse being that Q1 is always the slowest quarter of the year for game sales and PS3 demand seems to be (far) lower than was (initially) expected. I'm not trying to bash Sony, but in most years it is pretty impressive if 6 Million units of all systems combined get sold in Q1 in Japan and North America.
The 65nm chips could be included also, but it should not have performance implications.
I'm willing to bet the move towards the 65nm chip is entirely cost related. Microsoft should be able to produce more chips off of the same current cost, remove many cooling components and get a smaller power supply from a move like this; if they also integrate several of the smaller controller chips at the same time the cost reduction should be pretty dramatic.
It will include a larger hard drive, universal remote, and possibly the HD-DVD player.
Being that Microsoft already is making money on the XBox 360, and if I'm correct about the correct about the cost savings, I would say that the HD-DVD player is very likely. A larger hard-drive will (probably) not add too much in the way of cost to the system, and neither would a HDMI port, so Microsoft could (possibly) add a component which cost more than $100 to the system without impacting the price; they could include the cost saving changes in all models, add the HD-DVD to their new priemium and compete on features with the PS3 at a lower price and reduce the cost of their current Priemium to make an 'affordable' gaming system for people who only care about games.
On the YouTube video summary (thanks to the guys that put that up, btw), this just lends more credence to what the "liberals" or "democrats" or whatever you want to call them have been saying. By acting childish, and being vulgar and stupid, these idiots are showing that they have no legitimate argument or opposing viewpoint to give. Because of that, they just spew complete trash, and hope to ridicule the people that think that there is something -very- wrong in this country right now.
The problem isn't with the 'Conservatives', 'Republicans' or with any political party but is (in fact) that few people listen to opposing viewpoints and try to counter them intelligently. If you bring up the fact that Mars' polar ice caps are melting and this should be explained before we blindly accept the conclusion that Global Warming is man made you will see a lot of "liberals" or "democrats" acting childish, and being vulgar and stupid; if you say that Homosexual Unions should have a different term than "Marriage" you will see a lot of "liberals" or "democrats" acting childish, and being vulgar and stupid.
I remember reading an article by Ann Coulter that talked about how the standard "Liberal" response to well informed debate from a "Conservative" was to Pie them; lots of well respected politicians and public figures who have achieved a lot of impressive things have been pied because someone disagreed with them and couldn't produce an intelligent counter argument. Whether or not you agree with someone it is highly disrespectful to sing from the audience in the middle of a debate.
If you really want a more intelligent debate you have to get mad at both the conservatives and the liberals when they're acting like children.
For the longest time I have been told that the myth of the electric car was that it was a more environmentaly sound automobile than a gasoline powered automobile; that with the comination of how much energy was wasted in charging the battery and with how most energy comes from coal, natural gas or oil power plants the electric car produced far more polution than a gasoline car. I don't know if this is true anymore ( there have been massive improvements in battery technology over the past couple of decades ) but it is worth investigating to see whether it is still true. Personally, I suspect that less polution would be produced if everyone "down-sized" their car to better suit their needs ( SUV -> Minivan -> Wagon -> Full Sized -> Mid Size -> Compact -> Sub-Compact -> Smart Car -> Scooter -> Bicycle ) and used public transit where possible rather than if everyone switched to electric cars.
Your reasons are probably why Blu-Ray will win if Blu-Ray wins but that doesn't mean that HD-DVD won't win...
Currently, in most sales categories HD-DVD has an edge over Blu-Ray ( link ) even though there are nearly 1 Million PS3 systems in people's homes. One thing you could assume is that the people who are willing to spend $500/$600 on a movie player find the three options (XBox 360 + HD-DVD, Stand alone HD-DVD player, PS3) about as compelling with a slight edge to HD-DVD.
Now, much like videogames, the Hard-Core early adopter does not bring success to a format; it is the average consume who is not going to pay much more than $200 for a movie player that will determine which format is successful. HD-DVD will likely be in this range in the near future (12-18 months) while it will take Blu-Ray much longer to be in a similar price range; if consumers run to HD-DVD rather than wait for Blu-Ray the HD-DVD format will win. Movie Studios (like Videogame publishers) have very little interest in making a format popular, and will rapidly throw support behind any format that is becoming reasonably popular; they assumed 10 Million PS3 systems would be sold before 2006 ended which led to a lot of the support from studios (and we know how that ended).
It's consumer suport, not studio or hardware developer support, which will determine what format will win. No one knows how consumers will react so it is impossible to say one format will beat the other.
HD-DVD really has Universal and Microsoft as the primary backers - and Microsoft didn't even have the balls to include the player in the 360, the only consumer device they actually make that could achieve some inroads! We all know how successful console add-ons are in the long run.
Maybe Microsoft didn't want to delay their product by a year in order to wait for the format to be complete, didn't want to increase the production cost by $200 to include the format into their system, and wanted to be able to supply more than 200,000 systems at launch.
"I will grant that talking to the people I did at AGU represents a small fraction of all the attendees. I will grant that there is no way to know whether my averaging of attitudes in the climsci world, as sensed by talking with a few people over a few days, scales up to represent the true feelings of the collective. But I will tell you what I found, and what I felt, and whether you think it might represent the current attitude of climsci world is up to you."
"To sum the state of climsci world in one word, as I see it right now, it is this: tension."
"..."
"What I see is something that I am having a hard time labeling, but that I might call either a "hangover" or a "sophomore slump" or "buyers remorse." None fit perfectly, but perhaps the combination does. I speak for (my interpretation) of the collective: {We tried for years - decades - to get them to listen to us about climate change. To do that we had to ramp up our rhetoric. We had to figure out ways to tone down our natural skepticism (we are scientists, after all) in order to put on a united face. We knew it would mean pushing the science harder than it should be. We knew it would mean allowing the boundary-pushers on the "it's happening" side free reign while stifling the boundary-pushers on the other side. But knowing the science, we knew the stakes to humanity were high and that the opposition to the truth would be fierce, so we knew we had to dig in. But now they are listening. Now they do believe us. Now they say they're ready to take action. And now we're wondering if we didn't create a monster. We're wondering if they realize how uncertain our projections of future climate are. We wonder if we've oversold the science. We're wondering what happened to our community, that individuals caveat even the most minor questionings of barely-proven climate change evidence, lest they be tagged as "skeptics." We're wondering if we've let our alarm at the problem trickle to the public sphere, missing all the caveats in translation that we have internalized. And we're wondering if we've let some of our scientists take the science too far, promise too much knowledge, and promote more certainty in ourselves than is warranted.}"
"..."
"None of this is to say that the risk of climate change is being questioned or downplayed by our community; it's not. It is to say that I think some people feel that we've created a monster by limiting the ability of people in our community to question results that say "climate change is right here!" It is to say that a number of climsci people I heard from are not comfortable enough with the science to want our community to push to outsiders an idea that we have fully or even adequately bounded the risk. I heard from a few people a sentiment that we need to stop making assumptions and decisions for decision-makers; that we need to give decision-makers only the unvarnished truth with realistic bounds on our uncertainty, and trust that the decision-makers will know what to do with it. These feelings came of frustration that many of us are downplaying uncertainties for fear of not being listened to."
"..."
"I realize that many of you will disagree with the notion that we are overplaying our hand, or are not giving full voice to our uncertainties. I'm not sure the answer to this question myself. But I write all this because I sense a sea change in attitudes amongst climsci people that I know as good scientists without agendas. These are solid scientists, and some told me in no uncertain terms that we are not giving full voice to uncertainties; others implied as much. Therein lies the tension. Where we go from here
, he's not claiming Blu-Ray isn't a dead end, it's pretty obvious that HD-DVD is, though.
There's not much point in buying into HD-DVD, the only thing keeping it alive is Microsoft and then only as a weapon to use against Sony. Without Microsoft's money, HD-DVD would be already dead and gone.
The sample set may be way too small, but I have seen several different sites track the sales performance of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray on Amazon.com and (currently) it appears that Blu-Ray is losing in practically every category. This really doesn't mean much at the moment because it is unlikely that either format is going anywhere for a while, but I do think that it implies that there is at least as much support for HD-DVD from consumers as there is for Blu-Ray.
Personally, I have no dog in this fight (I have a 1080i HDTV and no access to HD content currently) and I don't see either format pushing the other out of the market until something drastic happens (for example Blockbuster only renting/selling one of the formats).
Well, analysts were claiming that the Blu-Ray drive in the PS3 cost Sony $200 to produce so it is likely that a HD-DVD drive would cost a similar ammount for the XBox 360.
I would speculate that Microsoft might do this because the XBox 360 currently turns a profit, the redesigned XBox 360 will likely be less expensive to manufacture (by switching to 65nm they should be able to save money on the processors, power supply and cooling; HDMI and a larger hard-drive should not cost that much more than what the XBox 360 already has) and by switching to a different optical drive they may be able to prevent the firmware hacks that are currently on the XBox 360.
But walking into an obvious dead end like HD-DVD when Sony is clearly popular and will prevail with Blu-Ray
Why would you assume that Blu-Ray would prevail over HD-DVD, or if either of them will be successful at all?
There are several possible outcomes which should be considered:
HD-DVD could be successful and kill Blu-Ray
Blu-Ray could be successful and kill HD-DVD
Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray could be successful
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray could each become successful in different regions in the world
Dual-Format players could become popular essentially ending the format war
the general public could ignore both formats and stick with DVD
the general public could ignore both formats in favour of downloadable content
There are dozens of other possible outcomes that I haven't even listed...
Blu-Ray is not ensured success and a lot of its greatest strengths (like greater exclusive studio support) were gained under the assumption that the PS3 was going to be 'super successful'. Remember that most of the studios would have exclusively backed Blu-Ray when the PS3 was supposed to launch in Spring 2006, when that went away studios continued to support Blu-Ray because Sony was going to sell 2 Million PS3 systems at launch, an additional 2 Million units by the end of 2006 and have a total of 6 Million systems sold by March 1st 2007.
Hypothetically speaking, in March Sony may only have sold 3 Million PS3 systems worldwide and Microsoft could announce the Core XBox 360 being discontinued, the Bundle being priced at $300 and a HD-DVD compatible XBox 360 for $400.
True enough, a lot of the reasons why people hate Sony on Slashdot are not going to impact the average consumer all that much because they (probably) do not care that much about exploding batteries, DRM and Rootkits but the impact of other decisions Sony has made (probably) has not been felt by the majority of people yet.
Of potential PS3 owners probably about 10%-20% know that the PS3 has been released and know what it costs, and many of those are (probably) anticipating a quick price drop; if the price remains high for awhile, and sales do not pick up, eventually it will be well known that the PS3 is a flop. If Blu-Ray doesn't take off, and HD-DVD is adopted people will not be buying Sony HD-DVD players (because they don't exist) and will likely notice that "Sony's Blu-Ray format" was a flop.
I'm not saying that these things will happen, but a couple of high profile mistakes which the general public is made aware of can dramatically impact the brand of a company.
Essentially, if you want to buy a PS3 for its MSRP you can (probably) make some phonecalls and find one at a store near you or you can use the link above and find one from an online store; besides camping out at a store for the next Wii shipment there is no (reliable) way to buy a Wii for its MSRP. I would assume that the Wii and PS3 shortages will end within the next month or so as Q1 is the slowest quarter for game system sales in the year and both systems seem to be getting a more steady supply to stores.
I don't doubt that in many of the games there are a lot of very difficult to obtain achievements but I was trying to point out that (like all statistics that use the mean average) they are easily manipulated by a small group of people. Suppose (for argument's sake) that there are 250,000 XBox 360 owners who have completed 24 games to obtain 48,000 points each and each of these games had 25 achievements (on average) giving each player an average of 600 achievements; this would mean that the rest of the userbase would need about 10 achievements on average to hit the 50 achievements per user number that Microsoft is advertizing.
I think if they (truely) wanted to demonstrate how popular it was they would tell us the median number of Achievements/Gamerscore rather than the mean; that single user who has a gamer score of over 100,000 points will skew the mean by quite a lot.
Slashdot Mirror
The important thing to consider is that the format that wins will likely be the format which gets the largest content library; one format will likely start gaining a major advantage in this way within 12 or 18 months as it demonstrates that it can sell more content. Now, Sony is betting that the vast numbers of PS3 systems sold will lead to a dramatic advantage in the number of movies released for the Blu-Ray format but this may not be the case.
Currently, the average number of HD-DVD movies sold per HD-DVD player is standing at 28 (I know, the number surprised me too) and the average number of Blu-Ray discs (including Playstation 3 games) sold per Blu-Ray player is 7; certainly there are more Blu-Ray players currently (about 4 times as many) but they're not selling more Blu-Ray movies. This may change as the PS3 breaks the 5 Million unit sold barrier, but it may not and there is nothing saying that will happen any time soon; it should happen within the next 6 months even if the PS3 is an unpopular system, but nothing is promised at this point in time.
Not quite that simple. The PS3 will *probably* win, but it's highly unlikely that it's ever going to win to the same extent that the PS2 did.
... I have never seen a gaming platform sell really well for 6-9 months only to drop off in sales ...
I think the more appropriate thing to say is the PS3 could possibly win. Currently, the PS3 has been selling at a similar rate to how the Gamecube sold in both North America and Japan; most of this (at the moment) is that the PS3 has had such a limited supply, but the systems are available for purchase from online retailers and the eBay prices were lower than what people expected.
The PS3 has had a slow start, this is undeniable. Poor launch-titles (only Resistance worth playing, and even that arguably not as good as Gears of War), a hideous price-tag and hyped shortages so severe that many people were put off from even looking have all contributed to a launch that was more of a whimper than a bang. However, with so many of the big franchises still being tied to the PS3, I'd expect to see the picture change once the first round of price cuts hits (and Sony can't afford to wait too long with these).
The PSP has been on the market for nearly two years and has yet to recieve a price drop in spite of many analysts saying the PSP is in desperate need of a price drop. Sony has never attempted to compete on price, regardless on whether they needed to or not. A lot of the big name titles are likely to get delayed and if (big if) the PS3 sells poorly they will be ported to the XBox 360.
The Wii has had a strong launch, thanks to the novelty value and a media hype campaign (willingly bought into by many outlets and grass-roots types who want to play the root-for-the-underdog aspect) that surpasses even the PS2's, but I'd expect to see things plateauing in about 6 months, given that all the classic signs of another Nintendo flop in the same vein as the N64 and Gamecube are on the horizon. A slow schedule of "big" releases from Nintendo and very few AAA titles from 3rd party developers will have the usual effect, plus Nintendo are, for the first time, faced with the prospect of competing from the back of the technological pack, with many Wii launch titles, including Zelda, looking no better than late-era PS2 games.
History tells us that this never happens
If the Wii continues to sell well (which it probably will, because the Wii is still sold out everywhere in spite of steady re-supplies and the end of the holiday season) third party developers will support the system. After E3 last year many developers will be demonstrating games for the first time at E3 this year, and with the initial sales of the Wii being so strong their will be tons of announced games as well; I expect that every publisher in the World will be pushing their DS and Wii content at E3.
Realistically, at the end of this round of the console wars, I'd expect to see Sony with about a 50% share, MS with about 35% and Nintendo with the rest.
I would say that it is WAY too early to discount Nintendo and Microsoft or to proclaim Sony the Winner; first Sony has to demonstrate that they can lead in sales in any region in the world for any time period (even surpassing the Wii for one week in Japan would do).
The "problems" Alex St. John identifies are essentially that his business model doesn't work so great when people have to click a couple extra buttons and type a password, and that he would really prefer it if children could install his products without parental involvement.
Please promise me that you will never work on a project that has a user interface!
The fact is that by forcing people to "click a couple extra buttons and type a password" you begin to annoy everyone, and people with little understanding of security (read: 90% of users) will likely just get used to "clicking a couple extra buttons and typing a password" and it defeats the purpose of having the extra security.
The thing is many of the upcoming PS3 games do interest me, as do a very slowly growing number of Xbox360 games, I'm 20, I have a part time job, goto uni and love all the PS2 games I've played and am a bit of a fan boy. I'm more or less the market for the PS3 but I'm here wondering if it is worth the cash so how will Sony shift 6 million?
I could be absolutely wrong, but I suspect that your age is one of the main reasons you're so readily able to dismiss the Wii; I would say that the 13-21 year old male hard-core gamer group is probably not going to 'get' the Wii because (practically) every system they have ever owned will have had (essentially) the same controller, they are too young to be getting really tired of the existing game genres and they are too image conscience to feel comfortable doing something which looks goofy or childish. Those of us who are a bit older will have seen all sorts of controllers (paddles, track balls, joysticks, flight sticks, d-pads, analogue sticks) so we're less tied to the existing controller model, we have played certain genres and watched them evolve and stagnate, and some realize that we are not that cool so why pretend to be.
To maximize the interest in the Wii Shop channel, and to maximize their profit on each game, Nintendo is being very careful not to release too many of their biggest games at a particular time. If Nintendo releases one of their major classic titles every 6 to 8 weeks you will likely download it, play it until you complete it or get bored, check out the Wii shop channel every week for 4 to 6 weeks (and possibly buy 1 or 2 lesser known games), and when they release their next big game the cycle continues. If every game was available from the start, or they released too many big games at once, you'd likely buy a bunch of games and not look back at the Wii shop channel for months (or possibly years).
That and software is more like art than engineering, but no one wants to admit that.
Of all the Renaissance painters that ever painted, only a few became forever famous.
Same thing with coders.
I personally would use the term "Craft" rather than art because I have always believed that art is about "saying" something through your craft which I don't think is really the goal of software development. The truth is that anyone can be taught to be a reasonably good muscian, artist, or blacksmith and with proper motivation anyone can become great. I would say that there are two problems currently, schools focus on the wrong things (how often did you gather requirements, properly design, implement to given specifications, effectively test, or maintain a program in your school years?) and the industry seems to focus more on technology rather than skillset (does it really make that big of a difference to program in C# as compared to Java?); the result is you have someone who is trained to use a hammer designing your house, and you ask someone if they know how to drive a "Ford" when you are interviewing a truck driver.
According to the firm's preliminary estimates, as reported by CNBC, around 2 million Xbox 360 units were sold in North America from November up until December 25.
The figure for Nintendo Wii stood at 1.8 million units - despite the fact the console only launched in North America on November 19, and the first batch of stock sold out within hours.
link
In addition, Wedbush is estimating that Sony sold 600,000 units (800,000 cumulative) of PS3 and that Nintendo sold 1.3 million (1.8 million cumulative) units of Wii in December.
link
So NPD (the most accurate tracking company in North America) is predicting that Nintendo sold 1.8 Million Wii in North America as of December 25th, the analyst firm Wedbush Morgan is saying 1.8 in 2006, and your number says 1.2 (likely 1.2 Million in December).
On top of that in Japan the current numbers are 1,000,250 Wii vs. 456,750 PS3 where the Wii has been out for 5 weeks compared to 8 for the PS3; Nintedo has also launched in Europe and sold 325,000 consoles in 2 Days in Europe. So we have a number of 3,125,000 Wii sold before we know how many Wii systems were sold in europe over the past 4 weeks; if you assume sales of approximately 200,000 per week (a reasonable estimate) the Wii as sold ~4 Million units to 1.5 Million PS3 systems shipped.
Oh, I know, I know, when you said competition, you meant "real", "serious" competition. Not, in other words, the Saturn or the Sega CD or the CDi or the 3DO or the Turbo Duo or the Neo Geo. You meant the real, SOLID systems. Just like when you were saying that no Scotsman eats porridge, you were only referring to the true Scotsmen, not like, Angus. Sure, Angus eats porridge, but think about it -- he can't even play the bagpipes!
Most of the competition the Playstation faced in the early days could be compared to the NGage.
Certainly, the NGage was competition for the Gameboy Advance and some people bought a NGage and didn't buy the Gameboy Advance but no one in their right mind ever thought that the NGage stood a chance; the NGage was an awful product that didn't suit people's needs and was remarkably expensive.
The Sega CD, Sega 32x and Sega Saturn being released so closely together both splintered Sega's fanbase and (at the same time) angered many of Sega's early adopters; the Sega CD and 32x demonstrated that Sega was not great at supporting existing products and the Saturn launch with no games.
The CDi, Neo Geo, Turbo Duo, and 3DO were all really expensive in a time when a videogame system was seen as a children's toy; $500 is still seen as an outrageous price for a console and many of these systems were at that price or were higher. On top of that very few games were released for any of these systems while the Playstation was struggling.
You're aware, aren't you, that Sony's "core audience" is defined by about a hundred million PlayStation 2 consoles? Sheesh. I'm one of those PS2 owners, and I'm holding out on the PS3 for myriad reasons (the lack of a hit game being the main reason -- Resistance just isn't my type of game), so I think Sony might have some bumps in the road for the PS3 too, but it's a little early to be writing the obits.
That's simply not correct, Sony's core audience is the people who bought the Playstation or PS2 based on the strength of Sony's first and second party developers. If you look at the sales charts for SCEA ( here ) you'll notice that they have a lot of games that sell well but, except for Grand Turismo, none of their games "define" the PS2; when you look at the total PS2 chart ( here ) you'll notice that Take 2, Square, EA, Konami, and Activision were all heavily responsible for attracting gamers to the PS2.
The playstation did recover from a slow start but it did not have strong competition. When the Playstation was released the main competition was the Saturn and in Japan there was a close battle for a little over 2 years before the overall dominance of the Playstation was ensured; the main reason for this was that in North America and Europe the Saturn was dead on arrival and developers who had an interest in selling games outside of Japan were (essentially) forced to choose the Playstation over the Saturn.
At the same time, the N64 didn't launch until the Playstation had been on the market for 18 months; with this lead time the Playstation was already becomming accepted and had sold over 2.5 Million units in Japan, 1.5 Million in North America and (IIRC) 1.5 Million in Europe and was already becomming the favourite platform of third party developers.
Essentially, it could be argued that the PS3 is launching in an environment similar to the N64 did against the Playstation (where the PS3=N64 and Playstation=XBox 360) and at the same time competing directly against the PS2 (where the Wii is the PS2) ultimately the slow start is far different this time than it was with the Playstation vs. the Saturn.
Declaring some unit to be more popular "in the end" after less than three months on the shelves is like declaring a baseball team the world series champion after the Grapefruit League.
"In the end" is a phrase which is typically used to express how the anticipated result is different than the actual result and does not actually refer to a absolute ending; at this point in time it is fair to say something along the lines of "The PS3 was supposed to be the popular system this holiday season but, in the end, the Wii ended up being far more popular."
It's a marathon, not a sprint. You might be surprised at how the market looks at the end of 2007. The 2 consoles haven't even been out for 2 months yet. There are no winners or losers yet, just leaders. It's a long race. Now return to your parents' basement where you belong.
To a certain extent this is correct but it is not (entirely) true.
No one will have "Won" or "Lost" until sometime in 2008 but (as far as I know) no company has recovered from a poor start when there was strong competition. The fact is that Publishers look at system sales to determine which system will get exclusive games, which system will get games ported to it, and which system to ignore; if the PS3 is selling poorly while the Wii/XBox 360 is selling well publishers will devote most of their resources towards development on the Wii/XBox 360 which will reduce the number of PS3 systems sold (because people buy systems to play particular games).
The data is still not entirely complete (there are some game sales missing for the final week in December) but the yearly chart for Japan has the PS3 at 446,750 units sold; being that the Japaneese statistics are far more accurate than American statistics you could assume that Sony shipped about 500,000 units in 2006.
prolly 100k sitting on the shelves, the wii turned out to be more popular in the end
... United States up to the end of 2006, still promising 6 million worldwide by the end of March 2007."
The interesting thing is that Sony said:
"
So over the next 3 months Sony plans to ship an additional 3.5 Million PS3 systems. Now if you were to assume 1 Million units for Europe that still means that 2.5 Million PS3 systems have to be shipped to North America and Japan over the next 3 months. Personally, I wonder how many of these systems will just end up sitting on the shelf or in a warehouse being that Q1 is always the slowest quarter of the year for game sales and PS3 demand seems to be (far) lower than was (initially) expected. I'm not trying to bash Sony, but in most years it is pretty impressive if 6 Million units of all systems combined get sold in Q1 in Japan and North America.
The 65nm chips could be included also, but it should not have performance implications.
I'm willing to bet the move towards the 65nm chip is entirely cost related. Microsoft should be able to produce more chips off of the same current cost, remove many cooling components and get a smaller power supply from a move like this; if they also integrate several of the smaller controller chips at the same time the cost reduction should be pretty dramatic.
It will include a larger hard drive, universal remote, and possibly the HD-DVD player.
Being that Microsoft already is making money on the XBox 360, and if I'm correct about the correct about the cost savings, I would say that the HD-DVD player is very likely. A larger hard-drive will (probably) not add too much in the way of cost to the system, and neither would a HDMI port, so Microsoft could (possibly) add a component which cost more than $100 to the system without impacting the price; they could include the cost saving changes in all models, add the HD-DVD to their new priemium and compete on features with the PS3 at a lower price and reduce the cost of their current Priemium to make an 'affordable' gaming system for people who only care about games.
On the YouTube video summary (thanks to the guys that put that up, btw), this just lends more credence to what the "liberals" or "democrats" or whatever you want to call them have been saying. By acting childish, and being vulgar and stupid, these idiots are showing that they have no legitimate argument or opposing viewpoint to give. Because of that, they just spew complete trash, and hope to ridicule the people that think that there is something -very- wrong in this country right now.
The problem isn't with the 'Conservatives', 'Republicans' or with any political party but is (in fact) that few people listen to opposing viewpoints and try to counter them intelligently. If you bring up the fact that Mars' polar ice caps are melting and this should be explained before we blindly accept the conclusion that Global Warming is man made you will see a lot of "liberals" or "democrats" acting childish, and being vulgar and stupid; if you say that Homosexual Unions should have a different term than "Marriage" you will see a lot of "liberals" or "democrats" acting childish, and being vulgar and stupid.
I remember reading an article by Ann Coulter that talked about how the standard "Liberal" response to well informed debate from a "Conservative" was to Pie them; lots of well respected politicians and public figures who have achieved a lot of impressive things have been pied because someone disagreed with them and couldn't produce an intelligent counter argument. Whether or not you agree with someone it is highly disrespectful to sing from the audience in the middle of a debate.
If you really want a more intelligent debate you have to get mad at both the conservatives and the liberals when they're acting like children.
(PS. I'm neither a Republican nor an American)
For the longest time I have been told that the myth of the electric car was that it was a more environmentaly sound automobile than a gasoline powered automobile; that with the comination of how much energy was wasted in charging the battery and with how most energy comes from coal, natural gas or oil power plants the electric car produced far more polution than a gasoline car. I don't know if this is true anymore ( there have been massive improvements in battery technology over the past couple of decades ) but it is worth investigating to see whether it is still true. Personally, I suspect that less polution would be produced if everyone "down-sized" their car to better suit their needs ( SUV -> Minivan -> Wagon -> Full Sized -> Mid Size -> Compact -> Sub-Compact -> Smart Car -> Scooter -> Bicycle ) and used public transit where possible rather than if everyone switched to electric cars.
I admit I could be wrong though.
Your reasons are probably why Blu-Ray will win if Blu-Ray wins but that doesn't mean that HD-DVD won't win...
Currently, in most sales categories HD-DVD has an edge over Blu-Ray ( link ) even though there are nearly 1 Million PS3 systems in people's homes. One thing you could assume is that the people who are willing to spend $500/$600 on a movie player find the three options (XBox 360 + HD-DVD, Stand alone HD-DVD player, PS3) about as compelling with a slight edge to HD-DVD.
Now, much like videogames, the Hard-Core early adopter does not bring success to a format; it is the average consume who is not going to pay much more than $200 for a movie player that will determine which format is successful. HD-DVD will likely be in this range in the near future (12-18 months) while it will take Blu-Ray much longer to be in a similar price range; if consumers run to HD-DVD rather than wait for Blu-Ray the HD-DVD format will win. Movie Studios (like Videogame publishers) have very little interest in making a format popular, and will rapidly throw support behind any format that is becoming reasonably popular; they assumed 10 Million PS3 systems would be sold before 2006 ended which led to a lot of the support from studios (and we know how that ended).
It's consumer suport, not studio or hardware developer support, which will determine what format will win. No one knows how consumers will react so it is impossible to say one format will beat the other.
HD-DVD really has Universal and Microsoft as the primary backers - and Microsoft didn't even have the balls to include the player in the 360, the only consumer device they actually make that could achieve some inroads! We all know how successful console add-ons are in the long run.
Maybe Microsoft didn't want to delay their product by a year in order to wait for the format to be complete, didn't want to increase the production cost by $200 to include the format into their system, and wanted to be able to supply more than 200,000 systems at launch.
Kevin Vranes from the University of Colorado at Bolder has this to say
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archi ves/climate_change/001030so_what_happened_at_.html
"..."
"I will grant that talking to the people I did at AGU represents a small fraction of all the attendees. I will grant that there is no way to know whether my averaging of attitudes in the climsci world, as sensed by talking with a few people over a few days, scales up to represent the true feelings of the collective. But I will tell you what I found, and what I felt, and whether you think it might represent the current attitude of climsci world is up to you."
"To sum the state of climsci world in one word, as I see it right now, it is this: tension."
"..."
"What I see is something that I am having a hard time labeling, but that I might call either a "hangover" or a "sophomore slump" or "buyers remorse." None fit perfectly, but perhaps the combination does. I speak for (my interpretation) of the collective: {We tried for years - decades - to get them to listen to us about climate change. To do that we had to ramp up our rhetoric. We had to figure out ways to tone down our natural skepticism (we are scientists, after all) in order to put on a united face. We knew it would mean pushing the science harder than it should be. We knew it would mean allowing the boundary-pushers on the "it's happening" side free reign while stifling the boundary-pushers on the other side. But knowing the science, we knew the stakes to humanity were high and that the opposition to the truth would be fierce, so we knew we had to dig in. But now they are listening. Now they do believe us. Now they say they're ready to take action. And now we're wondering if we didn't create a monster. We're wondering if they realize how uncertain our projections of future climate are. We wonder if we've oversold the science. We're wondering what happened to our community, that individuals caveat even the most minor questionings of barely-proven climate change evidence, lest they be tagged as "skeptics." We're wondering if we've let our alarm at the problem trickle to the public sphere, missing all the caveats in translation that we have internalized. And we're wondering if we've let some of our scientists take the science too far, promise too much knowledge, and promote more certainty in ourselves than is warranted.}"
"..."
"None of this is to say that the risk of climate change is being questioned or downplayed by our community; it's not. It is to say that I think some people feel that we've created a monster by limiting the ability of people in our community to question results that say "climate change is right here!" It is to say that a number of climsci people I heard from are not comfortable enough with the science to want our community to push to outsiders an idea that we have fully or even adequately bounded the risk. I heard from a few people a sentiment that we need to stop making assumptions and decisions for decision-makers; that we need to give decision-makers only the unvarnished truth with realistic bounds on our uncertainty, and trust that the decision-makers will know what to do with it. These feelings came of frustration that many of us are downplaying uncertainties for fear of not being listened to."
"..."
"I realize that many of you will disagree with the notion that we are overplaying our hand, or are not giving full voice to our uncertainties. I'm not sure the answer to this question myself. But I write all this because I sense a sea change in attitudes amongst climsci people that I know as good scientists without agendas. These are solid scientists, and some told me in no uncertain terms that we are not giving full voice to uncertainties; others implied as much. Therein lies the tension. Where we go from here
, he's not claiming Blu-Ray isn't a dead end, it's pretty obvious that HD-DVD is, though.
There's not much point in buying into HD-DVD, the only thing keeping it alive is Microsoft and then only as a weapon to use against Sony. Without Microsoft's money, HD-DVD would be already dead and gone.
The sample set may be way too small, but I have seen several different sites track the sales performance of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray on Amazon.com and (currently) it appears that Blu-Ray is losing in practically every category. This really doesn't mean much at the moment because it is unlikely that either format is going anywhere for a while, but I do think that it implies that there is at least as much support for HD-DVD from consumers as there is for Blu-Ray.
Personally, I have no dog in this fight (I have a 1080i HDTV and no access to HD content currently) and I don't see either format pushing the other out of the market until something drastic happens (for example Blockbuster only renting/selling one of the formats).
Well, analysts were claiming that the Blu-Ray drive in the PS3 cost Sony $200 to produce so it is likely that a HD-DVD drive would cost a similar ammount for the XBox 360.
I would speculate that Microsoft might do this because the XBox 360 currently turns a profit, the redesigned XBox 360 will likely be less expensive to manufacture (by switching to 65nm they should be able to save money on the processors, power supply and cooling; HDMI and a larger hard-drive should not cost that much more than what the XBox 360 already has) and by switching to a different optical drive they may be able to prevent the firmware hacks that are currently on the XBox 360.
Why would you assume that Blu-Ray would prevail over HD-DVD, or if either of them will be successful at all?
There are several possible outcomes which should be considered:
There are dozens of other possible outcomes that I haven't even listed
Blu-Ray is not ensured success and a lot of its greatest strengths (like greater exclusive studio support) were gained under the assumption that the PS3 was going to be 'super successful'. Remember that most of the studios would have exclusively backed Blu-Ray when the PS3 was supposed to launch in Spring 2006, when that went away studios continued to support Blu-Ray because Sony was going to sell 2 Million PS3 systems at launch, an additional 2 Million units by the end of 2006 and have a total of 6 Million systems sold by March 1st 2007.
Hypothetically speaking, in March Sony may only have sold 3 Million PS3 systems worldwide and Microsoft could announce the Core XBox 360 being discontinued, the Bundle being priced at $300 and a HD-DVD compatible XBox 360 for $400.
True enough, a lot of the reasons why people hate Sony on Slashdot are not going to impact the average consumer all that much because they (probably) do not care that much about exploding batteries, DRM and Rootkits but the impact of other decisions Sony has made (probably) has not been felt by the majority of people yet.
Of potential PS3 owners probably about 10%-20% know that the PS3 has been released and know what it costs, and many of those are (probably) anticipating a quick price drop; if the price remains high for awhile, and sales do not pick up, eventually it will be well known that the PS3 is a flop. If Blu-Ray doesn't take off, and HD-DVD is adopted people will not be buying Sony HD-DVD players (because they don't exist) and will likely notice that "Sony's Blu-Ray format" was a flop.
I'm not saying that these things will happen, but a couple of high profile mistakes which the general public is made aware of can dramatically impact the brand of a company.
The internet rumors about the PS3 and Wii systems' availability are reasonably accurate ( http://ps3finder.com/ http://wiitracker.com/ ) ...
Essentially, if you want to buy a PS3 for its MSRP you can (probably) make some phonecalls and find one at a store near you or you can use the link above and find one from an online store; besides camping out at a store for the next Wii shipment there is no (reliable) way to buy a Wii for its MSRP. I would assume that the Wii and PS3 shortages will end within the next month or so as Q1 is the slowest quarter for game system sales in the year and both systems seem to be getting a more steady supply to stores.
I don't doubt that in many of the games there are a lot of very difficult to obtain achievements but I was trying to point out that (like all statistics that use the mean average) they are easily manipulated by a small group of people. Suppose (for argument's sake) that there are 250,000 XBox 360 owners who have completed 24 games to obtain 48,000 points each and each of these games had 25 achievements (on average) giving each player an average of 600 achievements; this would mean that the rest of the userbase would need about 10 achievements on average to hit the 50 achievements per user number that Microsoft is advertizing.
I think if they (truely) wanted to demonstrate how popular it was they would tell us the median number of Achievements/Gamerscore rather than the mean; that single user who has a gamer score of over 100,000 points will skew the mean by quite a lot.